The Stone Wife (45 page)

Encouraged, he entered the 1970 First Crime Novel contest with
Wobble to Death
, based on a Victorian long distance race, and won the £1000 first prize. This launched him as a mystery writer, but he continues his sports research and writing and is a mainstay of the International Society of Olympic Historians.

The Victorian mysteries developed into the Sergeant Cribb series, which really took off when they were televised (leading in UK ratings in the 1980s) and were chosen to launch the PBS
Mystery!
series. One of the Cribb novels,
Waxwork
, was awarded the Silver Dagger of the Crime Writers Association. Peter now has a small armory of such weapons, including the 2000 Cartier Diamond Dagger in recognition of his career. For some twenty years he has been writing the Peter Diamond series, so the honor had an extra cachet.

Peter married Jax, a psychologist he met at university, and she encouraged him to give up his lecturing job and become a full-time writer. As proof of her support, she co-wrote many
of the TV episodes, but really she prefers painting and learning foreign languages to writing. While Peter was working on his novels, Jax embarked on a London University degree in Mandarin Chinese. They have a son, Phil, and a daughter, Kathy. Phil is a suspense writer who recently picked up his first Dagger Award for the best short story of the year. Kathy took a different route, moved to America and became a Vice President at JP Morgan Chase.